1) What is the limiting variable in download and encoding from TiVo to the Mac? I was transferring 3 HD shows from my Tivo HD to my Mac formatted for AppleTV (looks great on the iPad), and it took literally all night to complete. My Tivo is connected via an AirportExtreme base station. Is processor speed the issue? Encoding format? What is the best encoding format for iPad and iPhone?

2) When HBO copy protects a show, is there any way to work around that? I don't get why it's ok to time-shift on the DVR but not place-shift. I have no interest in reselling or other unlawful uses. I just want to watch The Pacific at the gym or on a cross country flight!

Yes, it's going to take all night for 3 HD shows. The limiting factor is the processor because of some transcoding (perhaps the wrong word) that needs to be done before Tivo to Go works. The S3's are faster and I assume the XL's are too. Tivo to Tivo is the fastest because there is no "transcoding" (I know, that's probably the wrong word).

I have my Tivo hooked up to an airport express 802.11n (5GHz only). When I plug in my laptop to the ethernet of the airport express, I can connect to the internet at 22Mbit + (comcast) through over wifi. However, with the TivoHD, it takes slightly longer than real time for a heafty HD show. Some HD shows are more compressed than others. Most of the 1080i content I see on Comcast is around 5-6GB for an hour show. OTA broadcasts can be higher. I remember CBS 1080i were sometimes in the 7-8GB for an hour show.

Encoding format is only limited by what format you choose and your processors. iTivo doesn't necessarily use the latest and greatest builds of these encoders either. For example, I use Handbrake64 for most of my encodes if I don't want to cut commercials. I just "decrypt" and drag all the files to the Handbrake Queue. It's much faster.

If you don't want the commercial cut (which is sketchy at times anyway) just choose decrypt and use the Handbrake presets for iPhone/AppleTV for your iDevice.

Regarding copy protection. Legally, you're out of luck. It's up to the copyright holder and HBO to flag it how they want. If it's copy protected, you can't legally "uncopyprotect it."

Except that it doesn't do folders in the UI, I have been using iTivo more than the real downloading program.

The only problem is that iTivo often takes MANY minutes to actually connect to my Tivos, and often (but not always) shows an error saying that the Tivo disappeared, but it really hadn't, so I can then just start downloading shows at that point.

I'm not sure what info to provide, but I can provide useful info if it helps debug this.

Other than that, using iTivo is convenient, because I also get the extended show info files (for some reason I have it make both), and transfer them uncompressed (decode only), since as I said above, MPEG Streamclip lets me edit recordings (except for ones off of analog channels, which is a shame).

Yes, as mattack says, using iTivo you get the metadata along with the transcoded file for an mp4. iTivo makes nice folders that are navigable with pytivoX for streaming back to the Tivo. That's a great feature if you are archiving many episodes of... say... Dora the Explorer... not that I'd know anything about that!

The difference is if you don't care about the metadata. If your only intent is to transfer your show to a iDevice, you don't really care about the metadata. Using handbrake will be quicker overall. You can download the mpeg2 files (complete with metadata for transfer back to your Tivo if you want), but then drop them one by one into Handbrake's queue.

Certainly iTivo will automate all this for your overnight, but if it's raw speed you're looking for, Handbrake64 with a dual/quad/hyperthreaded-enabled processor will kick iTivo's butt transcoding. The iTivo presets will suit you fine - and I use them too - if you want to convert for an iPhone/iPod. I'd use the appleTV preset for the iPad but I don't have one to try it on.

The only problem is that iTivo often takes MANY minutes to actually connect to my Tivos, and often (but not always) shows an error saying that the Tivo disappeared, but it really hadn't, so I can then just start downloading shows at that point.

I'm guessing that there are many, many items in the Now Playing List of the DVR involved. From experience, I can tell you that having just a few NPL items makes that initial connection by iTiVo much faster.

__________________
Roamio Plus, Four HDs, Two DTs, One S2. (Yeah, I have a TiVo 'problem.') Mac Nut too.

Not sure if this is where you put in request for enhancements to iTivo, (correct me there is a better place) but here goes!

I would like to see an enhancement to iTivo, where you can download only the meta data from a Tivo program, rather than having to download the entire show again, so iTivo can then create the meta data file again.

This would have saved me quite a bit of time, if this feature was there.

Just DL'd iTivo 1.7.6, installed, connected to Tivo HD, retrieved NPL w/ 324 items (mostly HD). However, selecting an item in the iTivo NPL is incredibly slow; I mean like literally 10 minutes, just to select it and get the Download show button active. E.g., when I click on an item in the list, nothing happens - the row is not selected/highlighted. Haven't even tried downloading a show yet. The list, and thus the app, is effectively unusable.

It's that 324 items. The more NPL items you have the longer it takes. Still, 10 minutes seems like a bit much.

Once you select and download a recording (use 'decrypt only'), look in the DVR's network settings, diagnostics, recent transfers and see what kind of transfer speed you achieved "transfer to other devices" which would be your iMac. Let us know what that was. Maybe you have a network problem.

__________________
Roamio Plus, Four HDs, Two DTs, One S2. (Yeah, I have a TiVo 'problem.') Mac Nut too.

It's that 324 items. The more NPL items you have the longer it takes. Still, 10 minutes seems like a bit much.

Once you select and download a recording (use 'decrypt only'), look in the DVR's network settings, diagnostics, recent transfers and see what kind of transfer speed you achieved "transfer to other devices" which would be your iMac. Let us know what that was. Maybe you have a network problem.

Almost all of those 324 items are items that were recorded by the Tivo in its "Tivo suggestions" mode before we realized what it was doing and shut that mode off. It's daunting to think about deleting them one by one. Is there any kind of mass select/delete?

Back to iTivo, I finally got it to select one item to try a download. The file is 1980MB and is downloading at 1MB/second, so about 18 minutes for a gigabyte. I'll look at the Tivo's transfer speed per your suggestion in the morning, but based on the iTivo's download throughput display I think the network is performing well.

Almost all of those 324 items are items that were recorded by the Tivo in its "Tivo suggestions" mode before we realized what it was doing and shut that mode off. It's daunting to think about deleting them one by one. Is there any kind of mass select/delete?

None of which I'm aware.

__________________
Roamio Plus, Four HDs, Two DTs, One S2. (Yeah, I have a TiVo 'problem.') Mac Nut too.

I was wondering if there could be support added for making a download format which would work to be inserted in a Series 1 tivo. There was a version off ffmpeg which was capable of making "ty" format outputs which would be capable of being mfs_ftp'd to a series 1 device.

I now have an HD XL and a Series 3HD device which we use for most tv viewing, but I have a series 1 with lifetime in my exercise room. Once and awhile I would like to get a program from the HDs down to the series 1.

I've been using iTivo to transfer programs to my iPhone and my kids ipod-touch devices, it would be cool to be able to get the files downloaded and converted for my series 1 using my fast mac pro computer.

There seems to be plenty of programs/support for getting series 1 videos up to the series 2 or 3 devices, but not much for going back.

It looks like the version of ffmpeg in pyTivoX might be compatible with the ty patches. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Almost all of those 324 items are items that were recorded by the Tivo in its "Tivo suggestions" mode before we realized what it was doing and shut that mode off. It's daunting to think about deleting them one by one. Is there any kind of mass select/delete?

Here's something that might work, as long as you can find a long block of time during which you have at least one free tuner. E.g. I just created a 9.5 hr long manual recording.

Set the recording to repeat every day (with low priority so it doesn't conflict with other show). Set the "keep at most" to 1. Then over a period of days you should wind up with a large number of 9.5 hour recordings you will need to manually delete. But each of those should displace the equivalent of 19 shorter 0.5 hour recordings you no longer need to manually delete.

But TiVo's algorithm for keeping deleted programs isn't fully understood, and it has changed recently. So the above might not work. Let us know.

Almost all of those 324 items are items that were recorded by the Tivo in its "Tivo suggestions" mode before we realized what it was doing and shut that mode off. It's daunting to think about deleting them one by one. Is there any kind of mass select/delete?
...
Gordon

I stumbled across it on my Premiere... Can't you just navigate down to the TiVo suggestions folder, but instead of entering it, just hit Clear (lower left of the peanut) when it is highlighted and it will ask if you are sure... Again, took care of the whole folder on my Premiere.

I have used iTiVo to download all the World Cup 2010 soccer games from my TiVo HD to my iMac, and I am almost done, down to the last three. All the games from ESPN are about 28 GB each so it takes a while. I only download and decrypt as I use Handbrake for the transcoding into H.264.
My problem is that one of the games stops at 3 GB and says it is finished (no error). The game plays perfect on the TiVo but I noticed that there was an emergency test message from the station about where it stops. Has anybody seen this before and know of a way to get the program?

I am getting really tired of guessing what the episode name is <grin>... Would be nice if iTivo had an option to set the time/date of the file to the recorded time/date instead of the time/date of the episode. I would use this. I know it is kinda counter intuitive..but it is easily added to the app, no?

I have been using iTivo to copy files from a Tivo HD and then transferring them using pyTivo to a Tivo Series 2 to watch in the bedroom. When I copy an HD program and play it on the series 2 it comes out letterboxed (resolution changed?) Both tvs are widescreen and the HD version doesn't have letterbox. Any thoughts or settings that I can use to get it to fill up the full screen on the series 2? I am using the iTivo version 1.7.6 and MPEG 2 - HD setting. Thanks!

I'm having an issue trying to pull a recording of Oprah using iTiVo (H.264 3Mbps). It will download 1MB, then restart the download and repeat this cycle three times before failing completely. Other shows from this channel have been pulled successfully using these same settings. Could it be an errant copy flag that's stopping me in my tracks?

For reference, I'm running a MacBook Pro on 10.6.4 and an unmodded TiVo HD.

__________________
I'm collecting My Coke Rewards codes. PM me if you have any you aren't using.

Everytime I try to download with iTivo I get the error message:
"Your download location is not valid. Please select a valid download location."
I'm using the default location. I've tried changing it to other local directories.
Always the same result. Google search didn't bring up anything on this issue.
Running OS 10.6.4
Can anyone help?

I haven't seen anyone else with this issue, but I am hoping someone else can recommend settings for my situation.

I haven't shelled out for a HD TiVo yet, but I could part with $99 for a new AppleTV. I had been using Galleon to move programs between my Humax TiVo and my Mac, but now I want to transcode to H.264 in iTunes so I can stream them through the AppleTV (or copy to my iPhone 4).

So all my source material is SD, but much of it is letterboxed widescreen. The standard "AppleTV" (mencoder) setting in iTiVo does a great job -- fast, small file size, deinterlaced, great image quality (ironically BETTER than the source material). BUT... it doesn't crop the letterboxing.

I experimented with the HandBrake and FFmpeg encoder settings to get the auto-cropping, but HandBrake took over 3-hrs to encode a one hour program and had horrible interlacing artifacts.

I'm having an issue trying to pull a recording of Oprah using iTiVo (H.264 3Mbps). It will download 1MB, then restart the download and repeat this cycle three times before failing completely. Other shows from this channel have been pulled successfully using these same settings. Could it be an errant copy flag that's stopping me in my tracks?

For reference, I'm running a MacBook Pro on 10.6.4 and an unmodded TiVo HD.

Interesting, I have been having a similar issue but it's with using ffmpeg; it gets no more than 3 MB downloaded and then resets. I am able to consistently download shows with H.264. The problem I have with H.264 is that the audio is a little out of sync; hence why I have been trying ffmpeg. Thoughts anyone?

__________________To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. on my home theater and gadgets blog: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Had been using itivo 1.176 (tried also with 1.177b3) for a while no problem but suddenly my downloads take very, very long, like 6 hours for a 1 hour hd download. All i can think is that i updated my utorrent and restarted my computer. Also tried restarting my tivo but no help. Router is airport extreme. Thanks.

I am having the same problem of interminable downloads. It used to work fine, and on some shorter programs seems to be OK, but I have been trying to download a 2 hr movie that is taking upwards of 28 hours! I turned off comskip, but it didn't help.